Smart Growth Technical Assistance Programs

EPA's Office of Community Revitalization offers technical assistance to help communities learn about and implement inclusive planning and development approaches that promote community revitalization and smart growth.

On this page:

Current Technical Assistance Programs
Past Technical Assistance Programs
Special Smart Growth Technical Assistance Programs

Current Technical Assistance Programs

Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities helps communities develop and implement smart growth development approaches on a range of available topics. Eligible applicants are tribal, county, and local governments, and nonprofit organizations that have the support of the local government on whose behalf they are applying.
Equitable Resilience technical assistance provides design and project development support to disaster-prone and disadvantaged communities.
Local Foods, Local Places helps communities develop and implement action plans that promote local foods and downtown revitalization. Eligible applicants include representatives of communities anywhere in the United States.
Recreation Economy for Rural Communities helps communities develop strategies and an action plan to revitalize their Main Street through outdoor recreation. Eligible applicants include local governments, Indian Tribes, and nonprofit institutions and organizations representing any community in the United States.
Sustainable Communities Accelerator Network is a a national peer learning program to support local leaders in implementing plans to prioritize sustainability actions in their communities.

Past Technical Assistance Programs

Cool & Connected helped rural communities use broadband service to revitalize main streets and promote economic development.
Governors' Institute on Community Design supported governors to help their states develop in an environmentally and economically sound way.
Greening America's Communities helped cities and towns envision and implement design strategies for more sustainable communities. The program served communities in partnership with the EPA Office of Water Stormwater Management Program. It was formerly called Greening America's Capitals.
Healthy Places for Healthy People helped communities create walkable, healthy, economically vibrant places by engaging with their health care facility partners such as community health centers (including Federally Qualified Health Centers), nonprofit hospitals, and other health care facilities.
Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) worked with public-sector entities that want to incorporate smart growth techniques into their development.

Special Smart Growth Technical Assistance Projects

EPA's Office of Community Revitalization has occasionally worked on specialized technical assistance projects with partners.

Old North St. Louis: Sustainably Developing a Historic District worked with the Old North St. Louis neighborhood to help develop a vision to guide new growth and development in a manner that protects, preserves, and rehabilitates its historic character while incorporating environmentally sustainable features that enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors.
Atlantic Steel Site Redevelopment Project helped Atlantic Station, a redevelopment project in Atlanta, show that its smart growth measures would help reduce air pollution and provide other environmental benefits.
Clean Water State Revolving Fund Pilot Program was a partnership between EPA’s Office of Water and Office of Sustainable Communities to pilot a technical assistance program with three states’ Clean Water State Revolving Funds programs. This pilot explored modifications that could encourage investments that support sustainable communities and to provide models for other states. California, Maryland, and New York received this assistance. The California and Maryland reports are available here: Search EPA Archive Click on this link for the New York report (PDF) (12 pp, 350 K, About PDF).
Iowa Natural Disaster Program provided technical assistance in the aftermath of floods and tornadoes in Iowa in 2008 to communities that had been affected. EPA and FEMA worked with the Rebuild Iowa Office and Iowa Department of Economic Development. Information about this work is available in the EPA Archive. Click Search EPA Archive and search for "Iowa floods smart growth."
Smart Growth Index was developed a GIS sketch model to simulate alternative land-use and transportation scenarios and evaluate their outcomes using indicators of environmental performance. The program is no longer active, but the materials are available in the EPA Archive. Click Search EPA Archive and search for "Smart Growth Index."
Zuni Pueblo Technical Assistance Project: Equitable Redevelopment of Petroleum Brownfields for Zuni Pueblo and Other Tribal Communities Technical Assistance Project was formed by EPA's Office of Community Revitalization, Office of Underground Storage Tanks, Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, and Region 6 office and the Zuni Environmental Protection Program to develop a step-by-step guide on redeveloping petroleum brownfields sites. The guide focuses on three sites on Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico but provides information useful to tribes nationwide. The guide is available in the EPA Archive. Click Search EPA Archive and type or paste the guide's title into the search box.